Melancholy Quotes - Page 14

• As in our lives so also in our studies, it is most becoming and most wise, so to temper gravity with cheerfulness, that the former may not imbue our minds with melancholy, nor the latter degenerate into licentiousness.

  Pliny the Elder

  Wise, Mind, May

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• Work saves us from melancholy. Pleasure exposes us to it.

  Mason Cooley

  Work, Pleasure

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• Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures--but I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them.

  Laurence Sterne

  Adventure, Knights, Soul

  Laurence Sterne, Melvyn New, Geoffrey Day (2006). “A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy: And, Continuation of the Bramine's Journal : with Related Texts”, p.156, Hackett Publishing

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• And that dismal cry rose slowly And sank slowly through the air, Full of spirit's melancholy And eternity's despair; And they heard the words it said,- "Pan is dead! great Pan is dead! Pan, Pan is dead!"

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Air, Rose, Spirit

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1871). “The Poetical Works of”

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• I have come to know that it [death] is an important thing to keep in mind - not to complain or to make melancholy, but simply because only with the honest knowledge that one day I will die I can ever truly begin to live.

  R. A. Salvatore

  Mind, Important, One Day

  R.A. Salvatore (2009). “The Halfling's Gem: The Legend of Drizzt”, p.12, Wizards of the Coast

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• When soured by disappointment we must endeavor to pursue some fixed and pleasing course of study, that there may be no blank leaf in our book of life. Painful and disagreeable ideas vanish from the mind that can fix its attention upon any subject.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Disappointment, Book, Ideas

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• Haiti is the best cure against melancholy; it is also the most creative place for me to be. My productivity has increased enormously since I moved to Haiti. That's where I write my stories, develop my ideas and write nonstop, so it's a productive time, not a sleepy time.

  Jørgen Leth

  Writing, Ideas, Creative

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• Dandyism is the last flicker of heroism in decadent ages.... Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy. But alas! the rising tide of democracy, which spreads everywhere and reduces everything to the same level, is daily carrying away these last champions of human pride, and submerging, in the waters of oblivion, the last traces of these remarkable myrmidons.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Stars, Pride, Water

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• I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth,
  forgone all custom of exercise.

  William Shakespeare

  Exercise, Mirth, Important Hamlet

  William Shakespeare, Alan Durband (1987). “Hamlet”, p.116, Nelson Thornes

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• How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts--I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious--insolent & whimsical I must appear!--one moment flighty and half mad,--the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.

  Fanny Burney

  Real, Reading, Writing

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• During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Country, Book, Autumn

  Edgar Allan Poe (1927). “Tales by Edgar Allan Poe”, p.128, Dimitrios Spyridon Chytiris

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• Melancholy is ... the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Poetry, Tone

  Edgar Allan Poe (2016). “Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works”, p.148, Lulu.com

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• Venerate four characters: the sanguine who has checked volatility and the rage for pleasure; the choleric who has subdued passion and pride; the phlegmatic emerged from indolence; and the melancholy who has dismissed avarice, suspicion and asperity.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Character, Passion, Pride

  "Aphorisms on Man" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, (c. 1788).

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• They say that no one's gonna play this on the radio. They said the melancholy blues were dead and gone. But only songs like these played in minor keys, keep those memories holding on.

  Billy Joel

  Song, Memories, Keys

  Song: Baby Grand, Album: The Bridge, 1986

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• To fall for," "to be fallen for"--I feel in these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical, and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. Once these expressions put in an appearance, no matter how solemn the place, the silent cathedrals of melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar "What a messy business it is to be fallen for" by the more literary "What uneasiness lies in being loved.

  Osamu Dazai

  Love, Lying, Fall

  Osamu Dazai (1973). “No Longer Human”, p.47, New Directions Publishing

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• One of the most melancholy consequences of this habit of deferring to other nations, and to other systems, is the fact that it causes us to undervalue the high blessings we so peculiarly enjoy; to render us ungrateful towards God, and to make us unjust to our fellow men, by throwing obstacles in their progress towards liberty.

  James F. Cooper

  Men, Blessing, Ungrateful

  "A Letter to His Countrymen". Book by James F. Cooper, 1834.

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• The Future is distant, like the Past, and therefore sentimental. The mere element "Past" must be retained to sponge up and absorb our melancholy. Everything absent, remote, requiring projection in the veiled weakness of the mind, is sentimental.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Past, Mind, Weakness

  Wyndham Lewis (1914). “Blast”, Kraus Reprint Corp.

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• It is a melancholy but an undoubted fact, that, even in the most thriving countries, part of the population annually dies of mere want. Not that all who perish from want absolutely die of hunger; though this calamity is of more frequent occurrence than is generally supposed.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Country, Population, Want

  Jean Baptiste Say (1827). “A treatise on political economy: or, The production, distribution and consumption of wealth”, p.331

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• For many years I was the youngest among my mathematical friends. It makes me melancholy to realize that I now have become the oldest in most groups of scientists.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Years, Groups, Realizing

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 37), 1991.

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• I kept.. ..returning to the (ancient Roman) wall paintings with their veiled melancholy and elegant plasticity.

  William Baziotes

  Wall, Painting, Ancient

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• Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles.

  Leigh Hunt

  Affection, Trifles, Magnifying

  Leigh Hunt, Thornton Leigh Hunt (1862). “The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt”, p.31, London : Smith, Elder

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• Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.

  Jonathan Swift

  Wall, Real, Reflection

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Sheridan, John Nichols (1808). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.304

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• Each picture with its particular environment and unique personal relationships is a world unto itself - separate and distinct. Picture makers lead dozens of lives - a life for each picture. And, by the same token, they perish a little when each picture is finished and that world comes to an end. In this respect it is a melancholy occupation.

  John Huston

  Unique, World, Occupation

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• Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm.

  David Hume

  Ignorance, Pride, Together

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• Whoever commits to paper what he suffers becomes a melancholy author: but he becomes a serious author when he tells us what he suffered and why he now reposes in joy.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Joy, Suffering, Paper

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